@Arella Mae,
Men who had the poorest memory of the women's body language and emotional cues also scored highest on tests indicating sexually coercive and sexually aggressive attitudes. That suggests that some men who date rape, or who are sexually coercive/aggressive in those situations, might be very bad at reading a woman's body language and cues--and, for instance, they might misinterpret her resistance, or disinterest, as being a come on. They might think they had consent when they really didn't because they weren't even remembering her signals.
I personally think men with sexually coercive or sexually aggressive attitudes might not consider the non verbal communications of women important--if they view women as "conquests", her feelings about it just wouldn't matter, so they don't even attend to such things very well. And, the study suggests, that seems to be particularly true when the women are unattractive--their non verbal signals are the least well remembered.
The author of the study seems to feel that if you can improve how such men perceive the woman's signals, so they more accurately remember them, you might help to decrease sexually coercive and aggressive attitudes/behaviors. So high school and college rape prevention education should focus more on teaching/helping men to pay more attention to women's non verbal cues and helping them to perceive and remember them more accurately, so they would know what indicated consent, or interest, and what didn't. And the most socially awkward men, or those who hadn't had girlfriends or been involved in romantic relationships, might need this help the most
I gather this was a very small study, but more research about the relationship between men's sexual attitudes and their perception of women's communications, might prove to be both interesting and useful.
